Who Should Have the Right to Vote?

By R.N. Carmona

Everyone shouldn’t have the right to vote. There’s that one controversial opening sentence that some say is required to draw a reader in. Yet there’s nothing at all controversial about that statement. From an ethical point of view, it’s a true statement once one considers the dangers of allowing anyone to vote. There are glaring issues in continuing to bestow this right on anyone who is 18 or older.

The overwhelming number of non-college Whites that supported Donald Trump shouldn’t have the right to vote. One will find that the more one is misinformed, the likelier it is they have little to no college experience. According to statistics, there are more on the Left among college graduates than there are on the Right. This is quite telling. In the end, stripping an unearned right from millions of uneducated people secures more important rights for women (reproductive rights), children (the right to a good education), and people who practice religions other than Christianity. It’s a resounding win! Never mind that some of the rights secured are literally life-and-death, like the rights of minorities being confronted by police brutality. The Right is perfectly okay with infringing on the rights of people they imagine are their enemies, even if it results in harm or even death. Stripping uneducated people of their right to vote is extremely minor by comparison.

The question then becomes, how do we get from where we are to what’s being suggested here? Literacy exams have been proposed in the past, but the reason for such proposals were different. Primarily, these tests were proposed as means to oppress Black voters. The goal here isn’t to oppress anyone. The goal is to keep people from harm. More importantly, it’s to keep people alive. It’s also a utilitarian analysis concerning whose rights matter more. An uneducated person’s right to vote simply doesn’t matter more than the education of children, the reproductive rights of women, the lives of immigrants and minorities, the religious rights of non-Christians, and the marital rights of homosexuals.

When one considers the fact that people forgo their right to vote in election after election — 100 million Americans didn’t vote in the 2016 election — it can be argued that the right to vote isn’t considered that important. A woman in need of reproductive rights doesn’t surrender her rights. A child in need of education doesn’t willingly surrender that right. Minorities who experience police brutality don’t willingly surrender their lives. Immigrants don’t willingly surrender the life they made in the states. Those rights are taken from them by hateful individuals who weaponize their right to vote by rallying behind candidates who support their hateful agendas.

Even given a Kantian analysis, the opening statement isn’t controversial. Per Kant, people are to be treated as ends in themselves and never as a means. Uneducated voters, who are usually Right wing, consider people on the Left a means. In fact, according to the lot of them, the country doesn’t even belong to people on the Left. If it were up to them, people like myself wouldn’t be here. Anyone who isn’t on the Right is a means to their ends, so when they vote in a disastrous Administration, they don’t care about the people they’re hurting. They don’t care about endangering pivotal rights belonging to people on the Left. If it were up to them, women and Blacks still wouldn’t be able to vote, homosexuals wouldn’t be able to marry, non-Christians wouldn’t have religious rights, minorities would experience more police brutality, and abortion would be completely illegal. Their failure on gun control has already resulted in 18 school shootings this year alone — which is a rate of about 40%; should that trend continue, we will end the year with 146 school shootings.

So what’s the point of a literacy test and how would it work? How would it curb the kind of harm that’s been done? For one, it wouldn’t be multiple choice or about correct answers. The tests would be designed to render thoughtful, well-argued responses. It doesn’t matter what people are arguing for, so long as they can demonstrate good arguments and good reasons for subscribing to a given view. Let’s place a bet on how many “god hates fags,” “abortion is murder,” “ban all them Muslims,” “kill the niggers and spics” people will pass a written exam of this sort. An oral presentation could serve as a useful second half to such an exam. Let’s see the well-organized Right wing voting block passes around the right answers to that.

What might very well happen is that uneducated people might realize that education is valuable and that they need to go out and get educated in order to defend their current point of views. In doing so, however, they’ll then realize how mistaken they are. It happens all the time to hardnosed Christians who deny evolution. Some of them even abandon the religion altogether. I’m sure it’ll happen to the uneducated too. Or they’ll whine and moan about them damn liberals and about how their voice isn’t heard; they do it anyway every time Democrats are elected, so again, what would be the difference if they were actually silenced?

All would-be voters would have to articulate answers to the questions like the following. For sake of simplicity, we can focus on an issues that has once again become central because of the Parkland shooting.

Where do you stand on gun control?

What arguments can you make in favor of someone owning a semi-automatic weapon?

Why can’t this same individual own a nuclear arm?

What arguments can you make against someone owning a semi-automatic weapon?

All would-be voters would be required to answer all the question, both for and the against because in having to process their opponent’s way of thinking, they may come to see their own errors. So this test can be developed by historians, philosophers, scientists, etc. The questions would focus on pertinent issues and any voter who can’t get beyond “god hates fags” and “ban the Muslims” would disqualify themselves.

So who decides who passes or fails? You decide! Like any other test, pass or fail falls on your shoulders. Let’s place a bet on the aforementioned people walking out without answering. People who complain about biased graders need to realize that bias isn’t necessarily bad. Perfect objectivity isn’t necessary either. I think one should be able to discern who’s reasonable and who isn’t based on the replies given, should any be given because like I suggested, some may decline to respond. And that’s their failure.

The question then becomes, what if someone can’t articulate their thinking? They wouldn’t lose their right to vote for sake of not being able to articulate their reasoning on one of the issues. That’s the fairness of the exam, of any exam. Failure on one question isn’t a failure overall. Very few people will fail to articulate their intuitions and that’s what’s wrong with where we find ourselves. No one compels us to detail our reasoning. That’s precisely why people cling to irrational beliefs because such beliefs are based on fervent emotion rather than rational, logical methodology.

What’s clear is that the hateful ignorants won’t have anything intriguing to share. They’ll disqualify themselves and millions of Americans will be better off for it. So let our allies and the United Nations rain down heavily on the US should such disenfranchisement ever take place. It is the moral decision! Of course, we can stay on the current course and count up to 146 school shootings in 2018; we can pretend to be fine with the blood on our hands. We can wait to hear the identity of the next minority to die at the hands of corrupt law enforcement or the identity of the next woman to come forward as a victim of sexual assault committed by law enforcement. We can wait for education to be defunded further. We can wait for people to die because their health insurance has been cut off. We can wait for things to get even worse than they are before we realize that the ignorant enable the GOP to carry out business as usual. Collectively, those on the Left need to grow a spine and stop opposing the idea defended here because it makes them uncomfortable. Again, it is the moral decision and we should make strides to implement literacy tests, so that all voters are qualified enough to make the crucial decision of deciding who governs our country.

6 comments

For crying out loud, however did you get so many words together to utter such blatant non-sense!? You’re basically saying that people who don’t agree with you shouldn’t have the right to vote. That people who didn’t go to college are therefore stupid and should have no political voice. And your arguments consist of broad generalizations and prejudices only. You’re basically arguing for the end of democracy, just because you can’t handle the fact the half your country voted for someone you don’t like. You’re arrogance seems well matched with your ignorance. Pleas remove the word ‘philosophy’ from your heading. It’s utterly misplaced.

“You’re arrogance seems well matched with your ignorance” and yet, you’re so ignorant that you don’t know the difference between “you’re” and “your.” 231,556,622 eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 election. That’s nearly half of all voters in this country. If the right to vote can be forfeited so easily, then clearly it isn’t an essential or prized right.

The right to vote is weaponized by people on the far Right and is used against minorities, women, children, and non-Christians. The right to vote is used as means to discriminate and commit acts of prejudice. What I’m arguing is that there are rights far more essential than the right to vote. My unalienable right to live is more essential and yet, these people would vote in politicians who don’t care about police brutality. In 2016, the non-college White won Trump the election. Well, that and the Electoral College.

So it seems you’re also ignorant about the way things are done here in the US. Hilary Clinton won the popular vote and yet lost the election because of an outdated system that allows Wyoming’s voters the same weight as California’s or New York’s. This isn’t a democracy in where every vote matters on its own; it’s a representative democracy in where every vote is weighted in an unfair way.

Just for perspective, given Wyoming’s population, every one vote counts for about 66 votes as compared to California’s. That isn’t democracy! That is a system rigged to benefit what is clearly a less popular Right wing party. The uneducated don’t mind that the Electoral College has been responsible for every Republican Presidential win going back to George W. Bush. Bush only won the popular vote in his second term, but he lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

I’m arguing for the end of representative democracy and I’m arguing for the end of uninformed votes. Elitism shouldn’t be a dirty word and I wouldn’t mind it if the US either embraced an epistocracy or something more akin to Britain’s Parliamentary system. What we have today isn’t working and that is evident in the midterm elections, which were an indictment of the current Administration. Now with the House firmly in Democratic control, there are a lot of policies Trump won’t be able to enact. And thank goodness! I will not be removing philosophy from my headline. Philosophers entertain so-called scary ideas and this idea, isn’t scary at all; it’s the right way to go. Perhaps you felt convicted when reading this. Go educate yourself and make more informed votes. It’s that easy to remove yourself from the category of buffoon.

Not JUST White Americans, so work on your reading comprehension. I specifically called out non-college educated Whites, the same idiots that voted for your criminal in chief. New York just passed a bill that provides a way for Congress to seize his tax returns. He also stormed out of a meeting with top Democrats because Pelosi accused him of a coverup. He also joked about serving MORE THAN TWO TERMS, which is anti-Constitutional. He also joked about getting Barr to investigate Hillary Clinton, who is now a PRIVATE CITIZEN. That’s also anti-Constitutional. Idiots like you voted for an authoritarian and hurt people in the process, minorities and women included. Now, if you end up living in Alabama, Georgia, or Ohio, if you daughter gets raped by a family friend, she can’t get an abortion! That’s where your vote led us. Never mind the many, many hate crimes that have occurred since he took office, especially in places where he has held rallies! The correlation is astounding and, in this case, definitely implies a causation. Your vote led to this! You weaponized your vote against people like me, a Latino; you weaponized it against YOURSELF and other women; your weaponized it against Blacks. You weaponized it against non-Christians, especially Muslims. People who use their right to vote, in an uninformed manner, and take no account for how their vote will affect others should lose their right to vote. And I would start with non-college educated Whites, the very idiots that got your orange overlord elected. Now kindly go about your day because you’re an intellectual inferior; I don’t intend on wasting my time with the likes of you.

So only uneducated whites can’t vote, but what about all the uneducated nigs you’re currently sucking off, should they get let out of prison on election day to vote? Lol what a brainwashed liberal cuck.